How do you involve your existing employees and leaders in your onboarding and culture integration?

We give new employees a few options of buddies in the ongoing onboarding process. Let’s face it, we don’t hit it off with everybody and that’s ok. There are transactional buddies (where things are and how to do things) and there are relational buddies - focused on why things matter and who to work with. It’s also important to remember your buddy training and refresher sessions as well as the “thank you” program for the buddies that went above and beyond their typical job description!

Buddies are critical in the whole onboardee experience. Very often those buddies are in the same department or even team which is certainly good practice. However also think of a buddy that is outside of the department. That way you foster relationships throughout the entire organization. It may even give onboardees great insights of how the organization works overall.

It's important to recognize the difference between the roles of a buddy and a mentor. A buddy is a peer who can provide guidance on daily work-related questions, while a mentor can assist the new hire with adapting to the company culture and gaining insight on how to excel. Leaders should refrain from selecting buddies or mentors based on personal relationships or biases, and instead select those based on their abilities and work ethic.

We love the name culture book and often see it as a working wiki (digital) asset that can always be printed but for sure gets updated as needed and reviewed monthly. It talks about the vision and mission and values and has most of the pieces of an employee handbook but these items are much more focused on relational vs transactional dealings. We like to review this quarterly during our stay interviews and also ask our people to share stories a few times per year of how they are seeing culture in action (so things are more relatable).

When welcoming a new employee, it's important to communicate how they can achieve success in your company. To take your culture handbook to the next level, consider providing examples and stories of how current employees have used aspects of the culture to be productive, balance work, and meet their goals. These stories will help your new hires understand how your organization operates, what values are important, and how they can be successful in their new roles. This can create a positive and productive work environment where everyone is aligned around a common set of values and goals. But, make sure it stays updated! Only sharing stories from 10 years ago may leave the employee wondering about the current culture.

New hires want to hear from key leaders about the future, direction, and growth of the company. The level of influence and role modeling leadership demonstrates to new hires says more about the culture of the organization. When the daily experience with the team is congruent with executive leaders messaging that showcases a culture up and down the organization with strong stability in the core of who/what/how the company works.

Think of assigning cross-functional mentors as well. Usually mentors come from the same team or department. However, when starting early in building those cross-department relationships you will see that the engagement will thrive. It is also a great way for them to learn more about the business than just their own area of play. Probably the easiest way to do this is to promote this to Team Managers. They usually have good connections amongst them and could drive this program for you!

Day 1 is job 1 for a company. It is important to reconfirm the new hire's decision more than ever. There are many ways for new hires to see the company rallying around new hire's transition to the company. We have instituted volunteer orientation facilitators by training staff from various parts of the organization on how to present and deliver orientation with an onboarding professional. It's a great way to show the new hires that everyone is in it together. Plus, it gives the other staff an opportunity to learn new skills!

Many organizations already ask for feedback from their onboardees. I am sure you do too. But; how do you turn that feedback into actionable insights? And how do you ultimately act on those insights? It is crucial to have a clear process of what to do after gathering that feedback. So make sure to be able to: - Turn feedback into graphs and other reports. This allows you to show trends to your HR-team and upper management. - Consider tools that can help turning data into insights. Many tools that measure this are built on scientific studies that can do so automatically. - Measure over time. Having just one moment a year usually is not enough. You want to see trends and play into those multiple times a year.

Here are my suggested steps to act on feedback effectively: -Use both qualitative and quantitative data to gain insights. -Report feedback metrics to an advisory board consisting of leaders, HR, training experts, and other relevant personnel. -Once changes have been agreed upon, communicate them back to all employees to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Another way to engage existing employees and leaders in onboarding and culture integration is to invite existing employees to lunch or a hosted social gathering, such as a happy hour. Activities such as these should be integrated into the onboarding program, allowing existing employees to engage with new hires informally creating organic relationships and establishing the critical foundation of their company network.